Open source virtualisation: Who's biting?

Virtualisation is unarguably one of the biggest trends of the past few years, and open-source software has been on the IT radar for a while now. So does that make open-source virtualisation twice as much of a good thing?

At least some corporate IT departments think so. They're turning to open-source software as part of their virtualisation mix. Sure, savings are a big factor, but so is the ability to tweak the software to suit specific requirements.

XenServer's open APIs give him and his team of three Linux engineers better access to and control of advanced functions, especially security, Yazhemsky says.

LAO, a non-profit corporation that provides legal advice and services to low-income individuals, has 200 locations across Ontario and hosts three data centers. Those data centers house 239 Windows servers and 68 Linux servers. Some 95% of LAO's servers are running XenServer.

LAO has 154 terabytes of sensitive data such as client/lawyer information, financial files and individual case loads that span everything from burglaries to theft and murder. Security is a key concern.

Yazhemsky says that by building monitoring tools and integrating them with the Xen platform he's been

"If an attack manages to break into the system, our embedded script will shut down the compromised virtual machine immediately and bring another virtual machine up, in real time with no effect on users. That's something that you can't get from any closed-source solution," Yazhemsky says.

As a result, the organization is able to invest less in security than it would otherwise have to, he says. His calculation is that LAO spends about 40% less in security software and management costs than it would have otherwise, "because we can script events that proactively search for any changes," Yazhemsky says.

Open-source virtualisation -- tiny but growing

Despite its fans, the overall market for open-source virtualisation is very small indeed, though it is expected to grow.

"Open source is less than 5% of the overall server-virtualisation revenue market share, but could nearly double by 2012," says Alan Dayley, a Gartner Group research director.

Open-source hypervisors including Red Hat Inc.'s KVM and Xen -- used by both Citrix and Oracle Corp. -- and the management tools running on top of them are gaining strength in both adoption rates and advanced features formerly found only in the likes of VMware, the virtualisation market leader, Gartner says.

Gartner's 2008 figures show that for the hypervisor market -- in units, not revenue -- Citrix had 2% and Virtual Iron held 1%. For 2012, Gartner's projections are that Citrix will hold 6% of unit share, and Red Hat 2%.

Nevertheless, open-source virtualisation will likely always remain a small piece of the pie. "While companies like Citrix and Red Hat are going to see great growth, they are not going to take significant market share," says Gartner analyst Phillip Dawson. "Most of the share change will be between Microsoft and VMware."

And that's a shame, says IDC analyst Gary Chen, because open-source virtualization software has a lot to offer. "A lot of people don't really know how good Citrix XenServer 5.5 has become," says Chen.

One potential huge market for open-source virtualisation: cloud service providers. "If you're a large service provider and you're building a cloud, you may have very custom specific needs, [and] you may need to modify the source code and you can go with open source," Chen says.

As companies like Amazon.com build out their cloud computing strategy and virtualise literally thousands of servers in their data center, they will be looking at vendors offering cheaper virtualisation solutions with well-developed management tools that they don't have time to build, predicts Bill Claybrook, a former Aberdeen analyst who now has his own technology research firm, New River Marketing Research, based in Concord, Mass.

Under this scenario, he says, Citrix's attractiveness will increase. "Citrix is one company out of all of those vendors that could make some money in cloud computing by providing a free Xen hypervisor and marketing its management tools at a reasonable price," Claybrook says.

Is Oracle's role broadening?

Oracle's recent acquisitions of Virtual Iron andSun Microsystems, and their respective virtualization technology, could prove interesting long-term. While most observers expect Oracle's open-source virtualization software to be a hit primarily in existing Oracle shops, Sun's large customer base may give Oracle a chance to penetrate a greater number of corporate IT departments, says Claybrook.

"Oracle will probably end up with the largest open source for virtualisation installed base of any one of their competitors," Claybrook predicts.

For its part, the University of Massachusetts is running Oracle VM because it is such a huge Oracle shop in general, says Michael Poole, chief technology officer "It made sense to choose Oracle VM . . . especially with the significant number of Oracle applications we support." He says the university has realized significant performance gains and considerable cost reductions in its operations.

UMass is in the middle of an infrastructure-transformation project that consists of many sub-projects. While planning a new primary data center and a more robust disaster-recovery and testing data center, UMass investigated many options and chose to standardize on open-source Xen Virtualisation with Oracle VM and Oracle Unbreakable Linux support. UMass started implementing Oracle VM a little over a year ago.

By next summer -- the target date for the infrastructure project's completion -- Poole says the university will reduce its physical servers from 500 to fewer than 300. It also expects to save close to $100,000 a year in power and cooling costs alone. And UMass will have totally switched from VMware over to Oracle VM.

"We're a big Oracle shop. It was important to us to buy into the logic that says Oracle is developing and testing all of their applications on the Oracle infrastructure components, including Oracle VM, and getting the kinks out of the system, or at least reducing them before they get into general release," Poole says.

Poole explains that one of the university's biggest successes to date has been the virtualization of its Blackboard Vista learning management system. Through this, professors distribute content, exchange emails and engage in live discussions over the Internet with 63,000 students.

The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.

My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.

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